


Replacement Toothless

by IronGut



Series: HTTYD Plasma Shots [1]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23129143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IronGut/pseuds/IronGut
Summary: A quick one-off The Hidden World Salt-fic, about how The Hidden World's Toothless, wasn't actually Toothless, as told by Fishlegs in his diary.
Series: HTTYD Plasma Shots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1671475
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26
Collections: Read Us After Watching The Hidden World





	Replacement Toothless

Dear Diary,   
  
Hey, it’s me, Fishlegs again. I’m not sure why I keep writing that, but it feels good, so I guess I’ll keep doing it, especially cause, well, there’s not that much to feel good about these days. It’s a long story, but that’s why I’m writing it down, so that it all makes sense and gets remembered.

It all started when Hiccup found another night fury. He and Toothless were so happy, it was like nothing could ever keep them from smiling and being happy, even whenever one of the dragons broke something in the village and Hiccup would spend all day fixing it, he was the happiest I'd ever seen him. He never gave the other night fury a name for a while, he said he was “trying to think of something good” rather than just "something that happened to stick". The fury he found was a guy, which was the only thing he wished was different about him, he was a lot more slobbery and less intelligent than Toothless, he had bigger eyebrows and his eyes were closer together too, after that though I couldn’t tell the difference, even though Hiccup said there were other details. Doesn’t matter too much, they were his dragons, not mine.

Anyway, that all lasted about a month before Hiccup Toothless and him set out to find more night furies in the same direction the new one had come from. The three of them left, but only two of them came back, Hiccup and Toothless. Hiccup said the new fury was killed by these new dragons he’d never seen before, with boiling acid spit and long tusks, a species we eventually found out were called DeathGrippers, but it wasn’t actually the new fury who was killed and didn’t come back, it was Toothless.

A lot of the other vikings didn’t notice, either they were too dumb or didn’t care to see, but the bigger eyebrows and the closer together eyes and the way he acted, it was really clear that the new fury was wearing Toothless’ saddle and fin and was the one carrying Hiccup back. I don’t know why he was going along with things, but when I tried to talk to Hiccup about it, he just, sort of, started acting all weird, trying to make me stop talking, and trying to not listen to me. I let it go after a while and stopped trying. I still don’t know what happened out there exactly, but I think he couldn’t handle Toothless dying, and just, either the other fury’s tail got cut off in whatever happened out there, or Hiccup cut it off himself, so he could… replace, Toothless…

I mean, I can’t blame him all the way. I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost my princess, but still, replacing Toothless like that. I wonder a lot about why the other night fury played along with it? Maybe to get the same alpha status Toothless had in the flock? Maybe he pitied Hiccup and played along to keep Hiccup sane? Maybe a little of both?   
  
New Toothless wasn’t a very good Alpha, not like the real Toothless was. Toothless almost had like a second sense about when a problem was about to happen and would stop it before it happened. Like one time, Barf and Belch were playing around with Sven’s sheep, and were backing up when one of the sheep was play-fighting back, and nearly knocked over Sven’s log-store. Toothless was up and on the other side of the store in seconds, and when Barf and Belch bumped into him instead of the store, they got a roaring at and a mini-plasma blast to learn to be more careful. It was good Toothless was there to do that too, cause Bucket was right on the other side, and if it collapsed he would have gotten crushed by the rolling logs.

New Toothless didn’t even try to stop anything, he’d just watch until Hiccup told him to do something. He kinda didn’t care in general, not even for Hiccup. He was just… It was like he was staying close only because he had no choice, because he needed Hiccup in order to fly. He was even getting good at gliding with the tailfin locked up, way better than Toothless ever did, because Toothless barely ever used the locked open position, but new Toothless wanted it open constantly. I felt really really sorry for the new night fury.

Hiccup took a big turn down from there too. He started doing raids every other day it seemed, bringing back as many dragons to Berk as he could find, and ordering Berk to build lots and lots of new nests for all the new dragons. It was chaos. Every time everyone finished a new nest he was ordering another one built, each one was more sloppy and precarious than the last, we had to start building them on poles because we were out of room! But he kept on demanding more, and in a few months it didn’t even look like Berk anymore, there were more dragons than there were people! New Toothless couldn’t handle them if he tried! Like I said though, he didn't try though, he barely did anything except fly Hiccup around and play fetch with him, even when the nests fell down onto each other because they were built too fast and were holding too much. He'd just watch and then Hiccup would tell him to do something and THEN he would roar at the other dragons to knock it off.

Nobody said anything to Hiccup, except Gobber maybe, but he didn’t even do much to confront Hiccup about the village, at least not until Grimmel showed up.

Eret knew who Grimmel was, supposedly the “Night Fury Killer”, except that Eret said he was kind of an exaggerated threat, that the last night fury he supposedly killed was a decade ago, and that he didn’t know as much as he thought he did. Hiccup was still scared out of his mind though over the dart he found, and he ordered everyone to evacuate Berk. He said there was a trap in the forest along with a white night fury he was calling a “light fury”, but nobody ever found the trap he supposedly saw. We found out the light fury was real though, we all saw her following us on our way during the evacuation, well more following new Toothless, but I still don’t know if the trap was real or not.

I don’t know because once we did defeat Grimmel after finding New Berk, new Toothless wanted to leave to go be with the wild dragons in “the hidden world”, if there is such a place, with the light fury. I don't exactly blame him either, Hiccup was so scared and panicked by everything going on he blundered right into Grimmels traps twice, and it was only cause of luck that we all made it back out both times. He wasn't really acting like Hiccup anymore, and everything was out of whack with him. He ended up letting new Toothless go, though I'm pretty sure new Toothless was going to leave anyway even if Hiccup didn't want him to; he looked so distant from Hiccup at the end, it almost felt like he didn't even care about Hiccup anymore. When Hiccup did say goodbye though, I’m pretty sure it caused him to snap somehow. He went off acting like and talking like all the other dragons were leaving New Berk with him, and that they'd all be safer in The Hidden World and that the world didn't deserve to have dragons in it. It was totally strange and, like before with me talking to him about what happened to Toothless, nobody could seem to snap him out of it. He just either ignored or twisted whatever they were saying to him to make it fit with the idea that the dragons all had left.

Astrid pretty much took over as chief and we’ve been living with the dragons here on New Berk for a while now, and things are pretty alright. New Berk is a lot roomier and easily defensible, especially because you can't reach it unless you have a dragon yourself except for the port. She’s not betrothed to Hiccup anymore though, in fact she barely speaks to him, and Hiccup just goes wandering about the town now, talking to himself, and lost in the delusion that all the dragons are gone…

I really wish he had never lost the real Toothless…

**Author's Note:**

> Forever salty about the Hidden World, and how Toothless wasn't acting like Toothless, Hiccups plans/ideas all ranged between stupid and unhinged in the bad way, and when Leor in the Salty Dragon Bar discord ( https://discord.gg/MVhWTRq ) came up with this theory that the REAL Toothless had died and was replaced by a DIFFERENT night fury by Hiccup out of post traumatic stress and grief, well that just made faaaar too much sense and was too deliciously tragic to not at least develop a little bit.


End file.
